But to begin at the beginning. We learnt that TV tradie Scott Cam was to be paid $345,000 for a 15-month government contract. Nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you try, though with mates like ScoMo perhaps not all that much trying is needed.

Apparently Cam was a very high-profile television tradie who will do the trick to get more young people into the trades. This came as a complete surprise to me, so clearly I must not watch the sort of television favoured by Morrison, who announced the appointment of Cam as though it was the equivalent of the second coming.

ScoMo thinks that employing Scott Cam at great expense for 15 months of influence will entice our school leavers to flock to a trade course. What nonsense, and here come the wider implications of this story.

TAFE - the provider of competent professional training of trades of all kinds for the best part of a century - has been decimated by successive Liberal/Nationals governments. It will take more than this costly stunt foisted on us by a sacked advertising executive to turn it around.

Unsurprisingly, Morrison is unrepentant about this, insisting the pay packet passes the pub test.

"Scotty Cam is a successful tradie and he can make that message very clear," Morrison told reporters.

"We made no secret about the fact that he wasn't doing it as a volunteer and he has done this work for previous Labor governments as well.

"This is about getting young people into trades. He is a high-profile person involved in the media industry and you have to meet the market."

The peak union body in NSW said it was "ridiculous".

"Scott Cam will be paid $345,000 by the federal government to promote TAFE, meanwhile 200 TAFE staff will lose their jobs over Christmas to meet a 3 per cent efficiency dividend," NSW Unions wrote.

This is nothing new, for it was clear that TAFE was to be decimated way back in 2015 when then NSW Premier Mike Baird decided to move TAFE out of education and into the industry portfolio. This meant that corporate private providers became the biggest winners from the new regime. The late Greens NSW MP John Kaye said the government's announcement was an admission that "they have devastated TAFE and the opportunities it provides for disadvantaged students". All providers were assessed and managed by a department that had no interest in or understanding of education. It's be about maximising the number of qualifications at the least cost. As we learnt from the large number of bogus courses that jumped to cash in on the new system quality and educational outcomes almost entirely disappeared.

The social mission of vocational education and training had been junked by Baird who saw TAFE as nothing but a higher cost provider.

Then two years ago the news was even worse as we learnt that funding for the vocational education system has fallen to its lowest level in a decade amid a "piecemeal" and "ad hoc" approach to education spending, a new report from Victoria University's Mitchell Institute found. The report criticised state and federal governments for setting the country up for an "uncertain future".

It accused policymakers of "refusing to look at education as a cohesive, integrated system", and for allowing VET funding in particular to fall dramatically.

It warned the VET system has become a poorer cousin to the university system, with government expenditure for 2015-16 in the sector 4.7 per cent below what it was a decade ago.

According to the report, university funding grew by more than 50 per cent in the same period that VET funding contracted. The report said there was a "growing disparity between universities and vocational education and training".

It will take more than the appointment of a commercial television star tradie to restore vocational education to its rightful place in our education system, when TAFE was in its prime.